Three-dimensional modelling on the hydrodynamics of a circulating fluidised bed

The rapid depletion of oil and the environmentalimpact of combustion has motivated the search for cleancombustion technologies. Fluidised bed combustion (FBC)technology works by suspending a fuel over a fast air inletwhilst sustaining the required temperatures. Using biomassor a mixture of coal/biomass as the fuel, FBC provides alow-carbon combustion technology whilst operating at lowtemperatures. Understanding the hydrodynamic processes influidised beds is essential as the flow behaviours causing heatdistributions and mixing determine the combustion processes.The inlet velocities and different particle sizes influence theflow behaviour significantly, particularly on the transitionfrom bubbling to fast fluidising regimes. Computationalmodelling has shown great advancement in its predictive capabilityand reliability over recent years. Whilst 3D modellingis preferred over 2D modelling, the majority of studies use2D models for multiphase models due to computational costconsideration. In this paper, two-fluid modelling (TFM) isused to model a 3D circulating fluidised bed (CFB) initiallyfocussing on fluid catalytic cracker (FCC) particles. Thetransition from bubbling to fast fluidisation over a rangeof velocities is explored, whilst the effects on the bubblediameter, particle distributions and bed expansion for differentparticle properties including particle sizes are compared. Dragmodels are also compared to study the effects of particleclustering at the meso-scale

Conducting Successful Supervision: Novel Elements Towards an Integrative Approach

In recent years that has been an increasing interest in supervision within the UK's cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) community. This is because the role of supervision has begun to be recognized in relation to the delivery of effective clinical services (Department of Health, 1998), and because of a clear recognition of the need to ensure that CBT practitioners are competent. Perhaps less well recognized in CBT are a number of interesting educational approaches to supervision, ones that may make supervision more successful. This paper summarizes some of these theories from a CBT perspective. Whilst the evidence base does not yet justify being too prescriptive, it is argued that some of these theories, such as Vygotsky's notion of the “Zone of Proximal Development”, provide helpful prompts for reflecting on CBT supervision. An integrative model is constructed from these theories, with illustrative examples and suggestions for future research

Unconscious processing at the subjective threshold - semantic comprehension?

Our thoughts and behaviours can sometimes be influenced by stimuli that we are not consciously aware of having seen. For example, the presentation of a word that is blocked from entering conscious visual perception through masking can subsequently influence the cognitive processing of a further target word. However, the idea that unconscious cognition is sophisticated enough to process the semantic meaning of subliminal stimuli is controversial. This thesis attempts to explore the extent of subliminal priming. Empirical research centering on subjective methods of measuring conscious knowledge is presented in a series of three articles. The first article investigates the subliminal priming of negation. A series of experiments demonstrates that unconscious processing can accurately discriminate between two nouns beyond chance performance when subliminally instructed to either pick or not pick a given noun. This article demonstrates not only semantic processing of the instructional word, but also unconscious cognitive control by following a two-word subliminal instruction to not choose the primed noun. The second article investigates subliminal priming of active versus passive verb voice by presenting a prime sentence denoting one of two characters as either active or passive and asking which of two pictorial representations best matches the prime. The series of experiments demonstrates that overall, participants were able to identify the correct image for both active and passive conditions beyond chance expectations. This article suggests that individuals are able to process the meaning of word combinations that they are not aware of seeing. The third article attempts to determine whether subliminal processing is sophisticated enough to allow for the activation of specific anxieties relating to relationships. Whilst the findings reveal a small subliminal priming effect on generalised anxiety, the evidence regarding the subliminal priming of very specific anxieties is insensitive. The unconscious is shown in these experiments to be more powerful than previously supposed in terms of the fine grained processing of the semantics of word combinations, though not yet in terms of the fine grained resolution of emotional priming

Development and validation of the Facial Affect Learning and Memory Test (Falmt) and Facial Identification of Affect Task (Fiat)

The neurocognitive assessment of visuospatial memory has begun to receive attention and has been recognized as being important in the understanding of overall memory processing. Additionally, there has been an increased emphasis on emotion processing, particularly affect discrimination and attention bias. However, little information is currently available on learning and memory for emotional information. Because emotion is expressed to a large extent through nonverbal means, a nonverbal test of emotion learning would be valuable, although no such test currently exists. The aim of the current study was to establish normative performance characteristics, convergent and divergent validity for two newly developed measures of emotionally valenced visuospatial learning and memory, the Facial Affect Learning and Memory Test (FALMT) and the Facial Identification of Affect Task (FIAT). The FALMT was developed in order to examine aspects of emotional visuospatial memory in a manner analogous to non emotional visuospatial learning tasks (e.g. Biber Figure Learning Test), as well as verbal assessments of learning and memory, such as the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT). The FIAT was developed as a measure of facial affect discrimination, and represents a complementary assessment to the FALMT in the assessment of visuospatial learning and memory of emotional stimuLi For the FALMT, learning across trials, interference effects, loss of information over the delay period, and serial position effects were measured. This study gathered initial evidence of the validity and reliability of these newly developed neuropsychological assessments

Does the job matter? Comparing correlates of stress among treatment and correctional staff in prisons

The wealth of literature on stress in the correctional workplace focused on correctional officers, frequently ignoring treatment personnel employed in these same institutions. This study advanced the literature on correctional workplace stress by: (1) testing for differences in workplace stress between correctional officers and treatment personnel, (2) examining personal and environmental factors to determine whether distinct precursors to stress existed for these two groups, and (3) utilizing multiple measures of stress. Self-report survey data from 3,794 employees in ten adult prisons in a southwestern state demonstrated that both groups of employees reported moderately high levels of job stress and stress-related health concerns. Apart from perceptions of safety, sources of stress as well as protective factors against stress were similar for both groups with environmental factors demonstrating the most robust impact

Deficits in object-in-place but not relative recency performance in the APPswe/PS1dE9 mouse model of Alzheimer's disease: implications for object recognition

Performance was examined on three variants of the spontaneous object recognition (SOR) task, in 5-month old APPswe/PS1dE9 mice and wild-type littermate controls. A deficit was observed in an object-in-place (OIP) task, in which mice are preexposed to four different objects in specific locations, and then at test two of the objects swap locations (Experiment 2). Typically more exploration is seen of the objects which have switched location, which is taken as evidence of a retrieval-generated priming mechanism. However, no significant transgenic deficit was found in a relative recency (RR) task (Experiment 1), in which mice are exposed to two different objects in two separate sample phases, and then tested with both objects. Typically more exploration of the first presented object is observed, which is taken as evidence of a self-generated priming mechanism. Nor was there any impairment in the simplest variant, the spontaneous object recognition (SOR) task, in which mice are preexposed to one object and then tested with the familiar and a novel object. This was true regardless of whether the sample-test interval was 5 minutes (Experiment 1) or 24 hours (Experiments 1 and 2). It is argued that SOR performance depends on retrieval-generated priming as well as self-generated priming, and our preliminary evidence suggests that the retrieval-generated priming process is especially impaired in these young transgenic animals